Revolution beat out Timbers to acquire Taylor via lottery

There is apparently no such thing as one too many as far as the New England Revolution are concerned.

The Revolution announced Monday that they have signed former youth U.S. Men’s National Team forward Tony Taylor, adding to their healthy stable of talented attacking options. New England acquired the 25-year-old Taylor via a lottery that the Portland Timbers also participated in, but the Revolution had the upperhand with a 71.4 percent chance of winning the draw.

Taylor joins Jay Heap’s side after playing four years overseas. The former Under-23 and Under-20 U.S. Men’s National Team striker – who was previously signed with controversial Traffic Sports – began his professional career at Portugal’s G.D. Estoril Praia. He then spent some time at Atletico Clube Portugal before agreeing to a deal with Cypriot club Omonia Nikosia for the 2013-14 season.

“Tony is a younger player who will come in and add to the competition already on our team,” Revolution general manager Michael Burns said. “He has some speed and is versatile in that he can play up top or out wide on the right. We’ll look forward to get him in as soon as possible and integrated into the team.”

Taylor becomes the latest weapon on a New England team that boasts plenty of talented attackers. The Revolution have several skilled offensive players, including Diego Fagundez, Charlie Davies, Teal Bunbury and Andre Akpan.

The Revolution are currently outside of of the playoff picture in the Eastern Conference. The club is in sixth place with 27 points from 23 matches, one point shy of the New York Red Bulls.

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What do you think of the Revolution adding Taylor? Do you see him making an impact this season or is he someone who will need to adapt to MLS first?

Plenty of firepower? Fagundez, 4G in 23 games; Bunbury 2G in 23 games; Davies 2 G in 7 games; Akpan 0G in 0 games. Nguyen leads the team with 8 G, and he’s a midfielder. As a result they have 30 total GF, no one in the current playoff 10 has that few. The only teams they are ahead of are sides like Houston that themselves desperately need striking.

So in the abstract signing a forward makes sense. The dubious part is Taylor as the answer, 14 goals in maybe 7-8 pro seasons. I realize he was once a prized prospect and done no favors by Traffic, but if your problem to be fixed is a bunch of similar prize prospects who don’t produce either, you might want a proven striker instead.

I’m not sure how this acquisition does much for them besides improving depth. To quote Tony Mazz (Boston radio personality): “I want horses, not more ponies”.

The Revs are the biggest disappointment in the league this year. They have plenty of attacking talent, but can’t put it together. They miss Agudelo (or someone like him). Mullins has shown flashes, but is not consistent enough, nor is he the physical presence he should be. They also need someone more consistent under Nguyen/Rowe who can cover more ground and link the attack better than Caldwell/Daigo/Dorman. Hopefully they can put it together over the next few weeks.

Also, the way they’ve blown leads the last few weeks makes you take a long hard look at Heaps… Tactics, fitness, something is off…

Does anyone else find it slightly silly, if not downright embarrassing, that the league we follow assigns some individual players (not draft positions) based on a lottery? Once you get past the salary cap, DPs, and the draft, the MLS player allocation system is a witch’s brew of impenetrable complexity and arbitrary bending and waiving of those same rules.

I’m not sure. I don’t think I do find it embarrassing. I think I like it more than free market systems that promote extremely inflated spending and hoarding of resources. Leagues like the BPL, La Liga, Bundesliga etc end up with minimal competition. Not so much fun that way either.

It protects their ability to continue to field a competitive team when they don’t make any money. They still have a good shot at quality players, rather than fielding a team of all minimum wage players and going 0-28-6 for the season.

I agree that MLS has WAAAAY too many categories of players who all fall into all sorts of obtuse allocation systems. That said, a free for all allocation system (even with just a salary cap and DP exceptions) would probably still create significant disparity because it would likely create a step back in quality due to affordability for many teams and the only ones capable of maintaining the current 3DPs with some sub-DP quality sprinkled in would be the rich teams.

I personally think the SuperDraft is fine (though the super part is debatable). Any other player coming in from abroad or cut by a club and moving should be a free agent, pure and simple. Too many ways to skirt the rules anyway and the league is past the point where important USMNT players are going to come in for non-DP money anyway, so having a separate allocation mechanism for them is fairly dumb (as are re-entry drafts, etc.).

As for the bigger picture, I think there is probably some significant smoke and mirrors over what a profit really means for an MLS owner. Yes, the business entity that is MLS Club X may not show a profit, but the owners have their hands in several other cookie jars and it is fairly easy to design a business as multiple corporations and make one the cost center while reaping big money from low overhead supporting businesses (and this is exactly what I suspect MLS does). I personally don’t have a problem with single entity and the franchise system, but really all of the money flowing from profit sharing, SUM, etc. should be part of the club bottom line, not hidden away in separate business entities only benefiting the owner and execs. From that perspective, I will bet a whole lot more MLS teams than we think would be able to pay their players on their own if it was all lumped together.

I guess I see your point – forcing Player X to go through an allocation system means he won’t have any leverage – he can’t make two or more MLS teams bid for his services. So if he really wants to play in MLS, and/or is out of options elsewhere, he’s stuck with that team. But I think you agree that the complexity and manipulability of the rules is ridiculous.